Applied Materials has once again been recognized as one of Barron’s 100 Most Sustainable Companies. This year, Applied moved up six spots from number 24 to 18 on the list.

Why It Matters: Fueled by AI and the Internet of Things, the semiconductor market is on a path to double in size this decade and exceed $1 trillion of annual revenues. In the same period, the industry is projected to quadruple its greenhouse gas emissions.^* This is a challenge no one company can solve alone. To help address this imbalance, Applied developed its Net Zero 2040 Playbook™ – a collaborative approach to reducing the company’s and the semiconductor industry’s carbon emissions.

A Rallying Point for the Industry: Deploying AI at large scale will require AI computing to be significantly more energy efficient than it is today. From chipmakers to cloud service providers, energy-efficient computing is emerging as a driving force for the industry. Applied is a leader in this effort with our expertise in materials engineering that enables advancements in semiconductor technologies at the foundation of AI.

Behind the Numbers: To compile the Barron’s 100 Most Sustainable Companies list, Calvert Research and Management analyzed the 1,000 largest publicly traded companies (not including real estate investment trusts) and narrowed them down to 100 by examining five weighted categories – planet, workplace, customer, community and shareholder – according to 230 performance indicators from rating companies including Institutional Shareholder Services, MSCI, Sustainalytics and Thomson Reuters Asset4. Sector experts then refined the rankings by analyzing how well companies are moving toward their sustainability targets. A total of 28 topics were considered across the five categories. Calvert assigned a score of zero to 100 in each category, based on company performance. All companies on the list scored above the bottom quartile in each category that is relevant to their businesses.

^*Source: imec